Americaâ€™s strength comes from its unity, not its diversity, conservative commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said last night at Concordâ€™s Capitol Center for the Arts.

â€œThereâ€™s two arguments. . . . The liberals, they say our diversity, our new diversity, is our strength. The more diverse we are, the stronger we are as a nation and a people,â€ Buchanan said. â€œAnd the other harkens back to an earlier era. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. The Pledge of Allegiance: One nation, under God, indivisible. Thatâ€™s how America is made strong.

â€œThey both, I donâ€™t think, can be true,â€ he added.

Buchanan was the featured speaker at the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communicationsâ€™s annual First Amendment Awards ceremony. Joe McQuaid, the Manchester schoolâ€™s president and chairman, is also publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, which strongly backed Buchananâ€™s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. The latter year, he won the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.

â€œIn Greek mythology, it is said that Apollo placed a curse on Cassandra of Troy, so that her predictions, though valid, would not be believed. A lot of Pat Buchananâ€™s warnings have proved quite accurate,â€ McQuaid said last night while introducing Buchanan. â€œAmerica would do well to listen to this Cassandra.â€

Buchanan spent much of his 20-minute speech reviewing changes over the last half-century in what he described as an increasingly polarized and fragmented news media. He also touched on presidential politics and the nationâ€™s changing demographics, which he said donâ€™t bode well for Republican candidates.

â€œThe GOP vote in 2008 was 90 percent Christian, 90 percent Americans of European descent. Both these groups are shrinking, aging and dying. . . . When America looks like California demographically, I believe it will look like California politically,â€ Buchanan said.

A former aide to Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Buchanan has run for president three times, as a Republican in 1992 and 1996 and once, in 2000, as the nominee of the Reform Party.